Do your off-world ambitions require taming unforgiving alien terrain? Then Iron Builder Industries has you covered with the Gila Mobile Mining Mech! Designed by chief engineer Duncan Lindbo, the Gila is built for Logistical Excavation & Geoengineering Operations (“LEGO” for short). The excavator buckets are made of virtually indestructible keetorange from the far end of the Unikitty system. Not convinced this mech can get the job done? See the excavator in action!
LEGO builder Beat Felber sure loves construction equipment! Whether Liebherr, Komatsu, or in this case Orenstein & Koppel, Beat gives them their due in brick form. This particular model in the O&K livery of red and white is a 1/28.5 recreation of the RH 120 C excavator, fully motorized for the toughest jobs. And despite this functionality, there’s no skimping on the details either! Check out all the intricacies around the treads and where the boom meets the front of the cab.
Charlie Jones has given construction equipment a futuristic upgrade with this digital build of a quadrupedal excavator. While the main arm looks to be largely stationary, there’s no doubt we’d still have tons of fun making this mech stomp around the sandbox. In the hierarchy of toy vehicles, tank treads beat wheels, but robot legs beat tank treads any day of the week.
There is so much going on in this LEGO construction scene assembled by Kashim K, and I’m not just talking about the well-posed minifigures. Everywhere I look, there are delightful uses of texture and color blocking to communicate different features in the build. Whether it’s the mechanics on the arm of the excavator, the patches of clay visible in the dirt, or the studs-out texturing on the white building, each surface offers a new tactile or visual experience that keeps the build dynamic. Even the transition from smooth wood slats to rough concrete walls in the pit hits the mark perfectly. But my favorite feature is below the road on the left side of Kashim’s creation. The pipes/tubes (visible in the ground thanks to the cutaway at the edge of the scene) are a strong reminder for those of us in the US to dial 811 before we undertake a project like this.
With the global travel restrictions imposed worldwide right now, many of us are missing airplanes and trains more than ever. But instead of cherishing the day we can all enjoy international flights again, the whole world found itself discussing a completely different means of transportation — container ships. The poor giant, 1,300-foot-long ‘Ever Given’ with about 20,000 containers aboard, is stuck in the middle of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
It seems that there’s no force in this world capable of freeing the vessel, but here enters the tiny hero — the brave little excavator. Looking at the heartbreaking pictures, we can’t help thinking of sending help to the place of the accident. Thankfully, throughout the years, LEGO has released many awesome excavator models, which, we are sure, could solve the problem in no time. Let’s dig into archives and assemble the rescue team of LEGO construction machines to save the world.
Click here to see our top picks…
There’s no such thing as a boring outside activity; there are only boring machines that make things dull and tedious. And for proper digging, you need a proper excavator, preferably a heavy-duty one. It’s been a while since we got a great LEGO Technic excavator set, but here comes the new 42121 Heavy-Duty Excavator. This 569-piece set brings back mini-scaled construction machines and uses a bunch of newly-introduced pieces for its neat design. The set is available for US $39.99 | CAN $49.99 | UK £34.99.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with a copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
Where most minifigure-scale LEGO builds lack the space to have functionality, many larger-scale LEGO Technic models emphasize visible functionality over aesthetics. It’s a rare LEGO creation that combines a high degree of functionality with a visually stunning look. With his Kobelco SK210HLC excavator, Polish builder Maciej Szymański manages to achieve this feat, in gorgeous dark turquoise, no less!
Maciej says that he spent more than a year and a half building this model, which integrates ten motors, eight pumps, LED lights, and pneumatic cylinders that he custom-built himself. The resulting excavator is fully operational, remote controlled with pneumatic actuators.
Read more about Maciej’s LEGO Technic excavator and watch it in action
When firefighters pull out the big equipment…I mean really big equipment, chances are there is going to be a traffic jam for miles. But chances are, they are also doing some big, important work; this scene by Steven Asbury is not your standard saving-a-cat-from-a-tree fare. The fire department excavator can perform a variety of tasks including pulling down severely damaged structures, clearing mudslides, and assist with debris removal in wildfires. It often responds with the Urban Search and Rescue team. Like so much of Steven’s work, this scene demonstrates rather cinematic photography and a keen sense of foreground, middle and background. Clearly he cares deeply about firefighting as this isn’t his first rodeo on the subject. Here’s a previous time we featured his work. You can see the inspiration for this particular excavator in action via this video.
